CRM: Everything you Need to Know about Customer Relationship Management

March 24, 2017

Network

Web Development

Written by: Zoe Christodoulides

If you’re looking to grow your business in a competitive market, CRM (Customer relationship management) can make a big difference. But many professionals aren’t actually familiar with what a CRM system is really all about, shying away from the idea and thinking it may over-complicate things. On the contrary, however, the whole point is to make things easier for you and your company’s work load. At its simplest, it offers an efficient way to manage your contacts, and all the data/information that’s most important to you, eliminating manual tasks and automating workflows. But more than this, it helps you track activities, leads, sales while also helping boost your sales and customer satisfaction. Whether you’re looking for a simple solution, or something that’s more specifically targeted to your unique business needs, Action Digital highlights what a CRM can do for you, how it can help and what kind of CRM is best suited to your company!

Why should you use a CRM platform & how can it help your business?

A CRM platform gives you the right tool to organise your customers and contacts. But more than that, you can track all customer interaction across your company, revealing sales opportunities and possibilities or future collaboration prospects. All employers and employees will be able to share contacts, their interaction with clients and sales pipelines. This will allow you and the management to view reports and insights, gaining a current and future outlook on your business.

Which CRMs are the best?

The inventors of inbound marketing, Hubspot, is a seriously good contender. Integrating their CRM tool with their great marketing system, you can keep tabs on each and every client interaction extremely easily. If you opt for its premium feature – website integration – you’ll be aware of when your leads are checking out your site. And this CRM platform also connects to all your social networks and much more. And all this, for free! (except for advanced features). For a very small business, insightly is a simple CRM software with all the basic capabilities to suit your small company, and there’s even a free version to get you started! Zoho is a great cloud based solution that has everything you need. Not just for big businesses, its small business edition lets you take advantage of a whole set of CRM tools at an affordable price. Now let’s move onto the crème de la crème of CRM. Salesforce CRM boasts plenty of benefits, mostly relating to sales and attracting customers, converting web visitors into leads and giving you access to important data in real time. Like HubSpot, it allows for social media integration and gives you the chance to go mobile.

When should you opt for custom CRM?

As all businesses function differently a custom CRM software can enhance your operation, offering a variety of advantages. If you’re a very small company, chances are that you won’t need to take this step, but if you’re a slightly bigger firm, you’ll soon reap the benefits. First and foremost, it’s designed specifically for the needs of your company, and so employees won’t take too long to adapt following implementation. A custom CRM also offers more flexibility when it comes to integrating it with your specific sales cycles and giving your business a competitive advantage, with more control over your business as you empower employees to use it to the very best of the company’s advantage while increasing productivity. Last but not least, your custom CRM will also provide better analytics for your business needs! At Action Digital we can help you setup the best CRM platform based on your business needs, whether it is a free or custom made solution especially targeted to your industry.